Another Reason for Washington in Venezuela? | New Eastern Outlook

Many myself among them have pointed to the vast hydrocarbon reserves of Venezuela as a possible driving motive behind the otherwise bizarre Washington intervention in Venezuela. The more I look into the situation, the more I suspect a quite other explanation for the intervention from a President who campaigned on a call to end US regime change interventions into other countries. The President’s NSC advisor, John Bolton openly stated it was about the oil. Could there be another reason as well? What then could it be?

Bolton also declared recently, “In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the word Monroe Doctrine. This is a country in our hemisphere.“ The last President to invoke the Monroe Doctrine, something going back to 1823, was Ronald Reagan. Before Reagan, JFK did so to justify US measures against the growing influence of the Soviet Union in the region after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

The Monroe Doctrine was drafted by US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and proclaimed in the State of the Union address by President James Monroe at a point most all South American colonial nations had achieved independence from Spain or Portugal. It declared that any attempts by European powers to try to establish new colonies there would be considered by Washington as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.” In effect it declared that the New World would be a separate sphere of influence from that of the colonial Old World of Europe. Notably, the immediate trigger for the 1823 declaration was a Russian Ukase of 1821 asserting rights to the Pacific Northwest and forbidding non-Russian ships from approaching the coast.

Historically the original Monroe Doctrine was largely a bluff, as the US at the time had no serious navy and relied on the British Royal Navy informally to keep other powers out. What then could be the basis of invoking the Monroe Doctrine in 2019, nearly 200 years later?

Target China?

Given the track record in brutal regime change of US operators such as Elliott Abrams and others in the present effort to oust President Maduro in favor of Assembly President Juan Guaidó as interim president, it seems something other than supporting free and fair elections is involved to put it mildly.